There's been a lot of talk about Catly, the fever dream of a trailer revealed last night at The Game Awards. Rumours are swirling about the project's origins and intent, and claims have been made about the use of AI and other Web3 technologies. This post collates various sources and evidence that have come to light, some of which I've not seen reported yet anywhere, which demonstrate that the game and its developer have strong ties to the use of generative AI and NFT/blockchain implementation.
Right off the bat, I want to make clear that I'm not going to be talking about the trailer. I'm not an expert in generative video, I have no way of knowing whether that tech is at this point yet. Lots of dissent is flying around. The trailer is not relevant to my findings.
First, the game's site: playcatly.com. The elements from the trailer, again, I'm not commenting on, but several of the assets throughout the site, such as the purple visor, the macaron bag, and the very strange vest-wearing cat for the gold sunglasses image under the Chic collection, have very strong indications of the type of poor physical logic and conceptual bleeding that's common in generative images. Not a smoking gun, but a point of interest.
On Catly's Steam page, there's a testimonial from League of Legends and Arcane producer Thomas Vu:
"This cat MMO is a triumph of innovation and heart, delivering an enchanting world that stands as a testament to the brilliance of its creators."
– THOMAS VU, Producer of League of Legends, Producer of Arcane, 2022 Emmy Awards Winner.
Vu is a prominent angel investor in the "GameFi" space, a term which is commonly associated with Web3, cryptocurrency, NFTs, blockchain, and other such technologies. Again, not a smoking gun, but we're building a pattern of associations here.
Information about the company, SuperAuthenti Co. Ltd., is very scarce, but we do know Kevin Yeung is their co-founder. Yeung previously co-founded TenthPlanet, a studio reported in 2022 to be working on multiple "metaverse" blockchain games. One of these was Alien Mews, a game described as a "digital cat life simulation metaverse." An archive of the company's github page from May 17, 2024 confirms their intent to use NFTs as a centerpiece of their other title Mech Angel.
We do, however, know that prior to adopting the name SuperAuthenti Co., they published another game: an app called Plantly: Mindful Gardening. Official info about Plantly has been scrubbed from the web pretty thoroughly, including its official app page, so I can only refer to this secondary source about it. (This site links to the URL https://www.authentigame.com/ for more info, but I can't find a trace of that site anywhere.) We know from this page that Plantly used these assorted GameFi technologies, from the description:
Your plants are not just digital tokens but emotional mementos
But we can go further. Note that Plantly uses the exact same font in its logo as Catly, but that's obviously incidental. But Plantly is listed here as being developed by Shanghai Binmao Technology Co., Ltd. It happens that we can find a resume for developer Yingzi Kong that lists three months of work experience for Binmao Technology working on "a metaverse game about cats" which is explicitly specified to be Catly. (Please don't bother Kong about this; I've not made contact and do not intend to.)
I suspect we could more conclusively tie these corporate entities together through this webpage which I believe contains business filing details for the Chinese company. I was able to briefly scroll through it once and did see SuperAuthenti Co. listed, but the site kicked me out for not being in mainland China and I'm unable to access it. If anybody is able to confirm this, it would help put a bow on the whole thing.
Conclusion (tl;dr)
Between the use of likely generative AI in assets used to market Catly, the co-founder's well documented history pursuing GameFi development, the attention of known Web3 investors and publications, and direct documented ties to previous blockchain app Plantly: Mindful Gardening, it is exceedingly likely that Catly, in whatever form it may eventually take, is aiming directly for a share of the AI/NFT/Web3 marketplace and will make extensive use of those methodologies. I hope this helps to clarify the coverage of this project going forward and confirms that this is not merely an unsubstantiated rumour.
I want to acknowledge a couple sources that were instrumental in this research: /u/retronomad_, who first made me aware of Plantly in this post, and Bluesky user @bleakvision.info, who identified the investing habits of Thomas Vu. Your work is very much appreciated.
Edit (2024/12/14)
Thanks to everybody who's responded and continued the conversation! I'm glad folks got something out of this.
I wanted to give some props to /u/Invertex for coming up with even more original research into both the game and Yeung's background and collaborators, including these unpublished webpages on the Catly website that show much less refined generative images:
https://www.playcatly.com/p2/detail/1 (backup)
https://www.playcatly.com/p2/detail/2 (backup)
https://www.playcatly.com/p2/detail/3 (backup)
https://www.playcatly.com/p2/detail/4 (backup)
Please check out their full comment here if you find this rabbit hole interesting.
Also thanks to folks for reminding me about the Griffin Gaming Partners venture capital aspect – this comment from /u/happyhumorist and this one from /u/ikkir sourcing the Felicia Day connection are both great additions.
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